EXCEPT for its bell tower and cross, the Benedictine monastery on the rim of the Roman Campagna might have been a powder magazine, a military prison, or a pesthouse for contagious diseases. At various times it had been all of these. Inside its bullet-pitted walls Garibaldi’s enemies had languished; against its walls they had been shot. And in its gloomy cemetery, now filled with frightful examples of baroque statuary, their bones lay in sterile dust alongside the victims of cholera, smallpox, and other epidemics no longer in fashion. After 1870 the building had fallen into shunned neglect, but around the turn of the century a group of Benedictines had taken it over as a monastery. By diligence and skillful management the disciples of St. Benedict had rebuilt the moldering pile, dispersed the unwholesome vapors surrounding it, and given the place a quiet reputation in the fields of science and religion. The present Superior, Dom Arcibal Tedesco, was both a noted seismologist and a cunning restorer of souls. From all parts of Europe visitors came to the Benedictine monastery, either to inspect Dom Arcibal’s wonderful new instrument for recording earthquakes or to make a spiritual retreat under his saintly direction.
Monsignor Stephen Fermoyle had little interest in seismology as he approached the monastery on a September afternoon shortly after the death of Roberto Braggiotti. The dust of a three-mile walk from the nearest village lay on Stephen’s black coat as he tugged at a bellpull dangling from the front door. He was dubious, depressed, about making this retreat. Dom Arcibal might be able to detect a temblor at the bottom of the China Sea, but could he lay his finger on the fractured foundations of a human soul?
Stephen yanked the bellpull again. A little wicket opened, and the tonsured head of a young man popped out as from a cuckoo clock. The young man had a soup-bowl haircut and a cast in one eye—a combination that made him look not too bright.
“I wish to see Dom Arcibal,” said Stephen.
The tonsured one revolved this idea in his head like a child rolling a marble in a cup. “Dom Arcibal is in the observatory. He is having a hard time with Stromboli today.” Evidently the young man thought Dom Arcibal’s instruments kept the volcano in check. “Is your business important?”
“Not particularly. I’ve come to make a spiritual retreat.”
“In such cases”—there was an inner rattling of bolts—“Dom Arcibal’s orders are to let the retreatant in and show him courteously to his cell.”
The door swung open, and Stephen saw a lubberly lay brother who had outgrown his coarse, brown tunic. Red wrists projected from short sleeves; he was barefoot, and a blast of kitchen odors gushed from him as he reached for Stephen’s suitcase. Stephen dubbed him “Fairhands” on the spot, and followed his guide down a stone corridor to an iron-hinged door. Fairhands bunted the door open, then with courtesy more gracious than manners motioned Stephen to precede him into the cell.
“When Dom Arcibal comes in, I shall tell him you are here. There is fresh water in that jug.” With these advices Fairhands seemed to run out of ideas. Mysterious occupations awaited him elsewhere; he was off to perform them.
Stephen surveyed his cell, furnished with standard anchorite gear: an iron cot, a straw mattress, one blanket, two clothes hooks, a rush-bottom chair, a kneeling bench, and a crucifix at eye level hanging slightly askew on a rough plaster wall. Stephen’s first act was to straighten the cross; the next was to gulp three large swallows of water. He then removed his collar, hung his dusty coat on a hook, and gazed out the curtainless window at the ornate monuments in the cemetery. When Italian taste falters, he thought, it really falls on its face. Unable to pray or meditate, he rolled the rough blanket into a bolster, lay down on the straw mattress, and gave himself up to thoughts of two people, one dead, the other throbbingly alive, whom he could not drive from his mind.
Again he knelt with Ghislana Falerni beside Roberto’s coffin and prayed for the repose of his friend’s soul. Once more, and for the thousandth time, he underwent the pitiful, dumb ordeal of riding back to the city with Ghislana after the funeral. Through a veil of black chiffon her face was a grieving cameo. Comfort of physical endearments was denied them; their suffering must be shared without a caress.
“What will you do now? Where will you go?” Stephen had asked.
“There are always places, things, friends—eager to help one forget. And the pity of it is, they succeed. The dead are so defenseless. Other voices drown them out; other images overlay their memory. After the first grief passes, the problem becomes how to remember.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“The evidence is strong—so strong that Italians have made a proverb of it: ‘Love makes time pass: time makes love pass.’ There is wisdom in that proverb, Stephen.”
Wisdom perhaps, but of a kind not provable (as Stephen discovered) in a month or year. His daily routine became a meaningless squirrel wheel; tasks once light as straws took on the heft of teak logs. A malaise coupled of grief and desire seized him. Days were saltless; at night the nether world of dreams, bubbling up in scarcely disguised form, shook him with waking sweat. The imperious voice of duty could not drown out a single syllable that Ghislana Falerni had ever spoken.
Stephen realized that he needed guidance not to be found in the ordinary confessor-penitent relationship. Once when Quarenghi made some mild comment on a poorly handled assignment, Stephen almost confessed his inner turmoil. But he was ashamed to tell the ascetic Quarenghi of his love for Ghislana Falerni; instead, he contrived to make it appear that his wretchedness stemmed solely from Roberto’s death. It was Quarenghi who had finally advised the spiritual retreat under the direction of Dom Arcibal Tedesco.
“This Benedictine is a true physician of the spirit. Put yourself completely in his hands for a month,” counseled Quarenghi. “He will skim the froth of misery off the surface of your soul. But more important, he will search the springs of confusion that seep into … ah, every life. I shall write him a note.”
And now, tossing on his monastic cot, Stephen waited for the wonder-working Dom Arcibal to appear. At intervals he heard male voices chanting the liturgical hours—Vespers, Compline. The bronze leaves of the graveyard oaks deepened into purple, then lost all color as Stephen, lying face downward on his mattress, prayed to be released from servitude to Ghislana Falerni.
Clearly enough he saw the nature of his attachment to her. There it stood, third in the list of capital sins—lust, a virus tide inflaming the membranes of his heart. But how treat the disease? The keenest instruments of self-scrutiny, the severest physic of discipline, had failed him. Sincerely Stephen wished to be cured, yet he was weary, too, of flogging himself with whips of remorse. That wasn’t the remedy. …
What was?
Dark the cell, darker yet the storm of guilt and confusion in Stephen’s soul. Hideous voices were taunting him, when he heard the sound of footfalls, one slightly heavier than the other, coming down the corridor. Stephen sat up as a cowled monk carrying a lighted candle entered the cell. The visitor, a compact, roundheaded man in his late fifties, placed his candle on the window sill and seated himself in the rush-bottom chair.
“I apologize for this delay in greeting you,” said Dom Arcibal in a bass rumble somehow pleasant to hear. “You must blame my tardiness on Stromboli. The Passy savants claim that the old volcano has been quieting down lately, but if today’s indications mean anything, we shall see a pretty show of fireworks within twenty-four hours.” Frank glee at the prospect of confounding a rival school rose in Dom Arcibal’s throat. He quelled the uprising. “But let us speak of you, my friend. Monsignor Quarenghi’s note was a masterpiece of discretion. It gave me no hint as to the nature of your difficulties. If you care to discuss them”—Dom Arcibal spread his hands in a savory, wholesome gesture—“I am free to listen.”
Dom Arcibal’s casual opening was the skilled maneuver of a serenely confident soul. It reminded Stephen of an incident of which Orselli had once told him. An Italian officer, taking command of sullen troops after Caporetto, had lined up his regiment in parade formation. Drawing his sword, he tossed it high in the air. The steel blade glittered upward, hung suspended for an instant, then began its downward plunge. At exactly the right moment the officer reached out, seized the falling weapon, and thrust it wordlessly into its scabbard.
“Can you imagine,” Orselli had asked, “what would have happened if the officer’s eye or nerve had failed?”
It occurred to Stephen that Dom Arcibal had taken an even greater risk. A fumbling approach, a single false note, would have aroused distrust or hostility. But the Benedictine’s friendly overture combined just the right mixture of scentific detachment and professional interest. His reference to Stromboli said, in effect: “Two things fascinate me: disturbances deep in the earth and similar upheavals in the secret places of the soul. Both can be recorded—the one, by a needle scrawling indicative ink on drum-turned paper; the other, by words discharged under pressure of buried emotions. I have listened to Stromboli’s story all day, and now I am prepared to spend the night listening to yours.”
Load-weary, Stephen began to unpack his heart. Tentatively at first, then with increasing confidence, he traced the course of his relationship with Ghislana Falerni. During the recital, Dom Arcibal watched the younger man’s lips as a seismologist might watch a jagged graph reporting a fracture in the earth’s crust. At times the line grew faint, retraced itself hesitantly, then stumbled forward again. Not until it had stopped altogether did Dom Arcibal make his first comment.
“Everything you have told me thus far, Monsignor, has occurred within the past few months. I should like to hear more about your earlier life. Suppose we go back a bit. Tell me something of your youth, your family, and your general background.”
“As you wish.” Stephen took a deep breath, then shot down the foaming rapids of memory. “I am the oldest of six children; my father and mother are devout Catholics who brought me up in a home of great piety and warm parental love. My outstanding recollection of childhood is the early sense of responsibility I developed while taking care of my younger brothers and sisters. I was a kind of—of lieutenant father to them, and exercised a natural authority over their actions. I dressed, fed, and bathed my brothers and sisters till I was fifteen years old. The only privilege denied me was the right to punish them when they were disobedient.”
“Did you resent this curtailment of your authority?”
“Sometimes. But when my father explained to me that parents received this authority directly from God, and could not delegate it to anyone else, I accepted his explanation without question.”
“Go on.”
“During adolescence I felt a strong urge to be first in everything: studies, sports, popularity. I wanted to lead my classes, be captain of all the athletic teams, go with the prettiest girls. I burned to excel. When competition threatened, I put forth greater energy, prayed harder for success. When it came, I accepted it as my due. I always had the feeling that I was one of God’s special favorites.”
“As I remember,” said Dom Arcibal dryly, “Lucifer cherished a similar illusion. How do you account for such a grotesque notion on your part?”
“I never thought of it as grotesque. I saw that God had blessed me with special gifts, and believed I must demonstrate His favor by the excellence of my performance.”
“‘Performance’ is a word used by actors. Are you a strolling player or a priest?” Without waiting for an answer, the monk continued: “Come, let us get into deeper material.”
Stephen took the plunge. “From my fourteenth year—the age at which I felt my first call to the priesthood—I liked girls. My mind throbbed with fantasies circling about the female secrets. I felt the need to enter upon and explore these mysteries. Between the ages of fifteen and eighteen I was strongly tempted to do so.”
“But you did not?”
Stephen’s voice was very low. “I dared not.”
“An interesting locution. I gather that you developed a profound sense of guilt about these sexual temptations.”
“I did. This guilt increased when I entered the seminary. Dedicated to the priestly life, I found myself torn between an ideal of chastity and a yearning for women. The conflict was so great that at one time I was deeply concerned as to whether I should continue my studies for the priesthood.”
“By what means did you solve this conflict?”
“By the means I always used when the going was hardest. I increased my devotions, prayed for the gift of supernatural grace, held on somehow from day to day. … It was never easy.”
Dom Arcibal gently rubbed his tonsure. “Avoid smugness, my son. Returning now to your handling of this deep conflict. Were there any other factors present in your solution of it? Any incident, encounter, or event that influenced you? Do not hurry with your answer.”
Stephen thought a long time. “I can’t remember anything.”
“Did your mother bring pressure of any kind?”
“Not unduly. I knew she was praying for my vocation, of course.”
“Your father, then?” Dom Arcibal permitted a note of personal curiosity to enter his voice. “What kind of man was he?”
Stephen launched into a tribute to Din the Down-Shouter. “My father was an uneducated workingman, but I have never met his equal in strength of mind or goodness of character. From childhood he was my model and guide. I think he has always been the dominating influence of my life.”
“Did you ever cross swords with him?”
“Not openly. I tried to be an obedient and docile son. But underneath, there was a constant competition between us. In this competitive struggle I always felt that I was wrestling with someone stronger than myself. This led me to ever greater effort to surpass my father. It has never been clear to me why I should contend, except in loving-kindness, with one who was always so good to me.”
“We shall come to that later,” said Dom Arcibal. “Meanwhile I think we have struck something of great importance. In the period when you were torn between chastity and desire for sexual pleasure, was there any significant passage between you and your father?”
“I can’t remember anything.”
“It’s not a question of remembering. Let your mind range freely over the whole field of your relationship with your father, and tell me the first thing that comes to mind.”
“Car tracks,” said Stephen, surprised at his answer.
“Why car tracks?”
“My father was a motorman. He drove a trolley car between Boston and Medford. As a boy I liked to stand with him on the front platform and watch him handle the controls. He seemed godlike to me as he drove the car along the steel tracks that have turned up many times in my later life as symbols of discipline and duty.”
Associations came crowding now. “The car tracks ran past a Catholic church—the Immaculate Conception, it was called—and my father always lifted his motorman’s cap as we passed the center door.” Stephen began to talk rapidly. “One day—I was about nineteen and a seminarian at the time—I took a ride with my father for old time’s sake. As we passed the church, he lifted his cap as usual. No perfunctory touching of hand to visor, but a real off-the-head obeisance to the Presence on the altar, accompanied by the ejaculation, ‘Blessed be God, Maker of heaven and earth.’ I have never seen a more pious action. Afterwards he turned to me and said, ‘Stephen, when I think that one day my son will stand at the very door of the Tabernacle, I am overcome by the Lord’s goodness and mercy.’”
“What effect did your father’s statement have on you?”
“I was deeply touched by it. To justify the faith he had in me, I determined to be a priest.”
Dom Arcibal shook his head in mild amusment. “That’s like saying that Dante wrote The Divine Comedy to justify the faith the Italian language had in him. Surely, there were other elements in your decision.”
“I don’t quite understand,” said Stephen.
Tartness of quince puckered the Benedictine’s lips. “You don’t understand because your remarkable talent for self-delusion won’t let you. Come now, Monsignor—didn’t your father’s remark open a whole new world of possibilities? Didn’t you see your chance to overtop this godlike figure at the controls by celebrating mysteries forbidden to him? I put it to you flatly: didn’t you realize that as a priest you could hold in your hands the actual body and blood of Christ while your father must be content with a passing act of adoration from the street?”
The enormity of such motives shocked Stephen. “Are such things possible?”
“Your whole life has shown it to be so. One aspect of your priesthood—I do not say all of it, because a priestly vocation is a complex work of God—is based on a desire to outrival your father. This unconscious rivalry is the key to your present difficulties. Proceed with your account.”
Omitting nothing, Stephen poured out the history of his love for Ghislana Falerni, and his struggle to stand free of it. From the sponge of memory he pressed the mixed sweetness and gall of their meetings, the joy of gazing at her across the table, the magnetic tide of sympathy that flowed between them, and the fearful backwash of remorse that buffeted him after each encounter. At the end, more confused than when he began, Stephen lifted perplexed eyes to Dom Arcibal in a plea for guidance.
“The thing that frightens me most is the force and recurrence of my feelings for this woman. Three times I’ve tried to tear her from my heart, three times I’ve failed. Will the old misery start all over when I see her again? Must I spend the rest of my life running away from Ghislana Falerni or flogging myself with whips of conscience for having talked with her?” His voice rose in anger and perplexity. “Why should she afflict me? I was proof against all others. Why am I defenseless against her?”
Sympathy for perplexed mortals charged Dom Arcibal’s reply. “Millions of lovers have found depthless joy in asking that very question. Ordinary men and women never cease to marvel at the biologic attraction (unique, they think) that they exert upon each other. We admit that such love exists in the world”—Dom Arcibal’s voice snapped—“but by our priestly vow of celibacy we renounce it.
“I will not indulge in homiletics with you, Monsignor,” Dom Arcibal continued. “I merely remind you that as a grown man you took a vow of eternal chastity. In language unambiguous and solemn you entered upon a sacred contract with God. To break that contract, or even trifle with it, means moral death … this is all quite clear?”
“Quite clear.”
“Yet, realizing as you do that your sacerdotal purity is in danger, why do you persist in this deadly dalliance?”
“I don’t know … I wish I did.”
Like a Greek chorus cleansing a tragic stage with chants of far-off ancient things, Dom Arcibal changed his mood. “Do you remember the passage from the Confessions in which St. Augustine laments pillaging a pear tree?”
A pear tree? “Yes, I remember.”
“As you will recall, then, Augustine asks: ‘What did I love in that sin?’ And he tells us that his pleasure was not in the pears—which he barely tasted and afterwards threw to the hogs—but in the offense itself! Augustine stole those pears becase they offered a childish opportunity to pit himself against God. Not merely to displease Him by breaking the Seventh Commandment, but as Augustine says: ‘I wished to mimic a maimed liberty by doing things unpermitted me, in darkened likeness of God’s omnipotence.’ In pain and humiliation the saint afterwards acknowledged that his offense at bottom was the colossally malicious sin of pride.”
Laying back his cannon-ball head, Dom Arcibal filled the cell with Augustine’s lamentations. “‘So doth pride imitate exaltedness … thus doth the soul commit fornication when she turns from Thee. Thus we pervertedly imitate Thee who lift ourselves up against Thee. Behold Thy servant fleeing from his Lord and obtaining a shadow. O rottenness, O monstrousness of life and depth of death, that I loved when I might not—only because I might not.’”
Revulsion at the linking of Augustine’s “O rottenness of death” with the living beauty of Ghislana Falerni; unwillingness to loosen his fingers in complete renunciation, and the belief that his love was not entirely rooted in disobedience crushed sore words from Stephen.
“It isn’t true that I loved her only because I might not.”
Contempt that the elect in wisdom sometimes employ on the ignorant for their salvation twisted Dom Arcibal’s smile. “You still hug that delusion, do you? Well, we must take that childish toy from your arms without delay.” Dom Arcibal became the cross-examiner moving in to trip the witness on his own testimony. “This contessa is a woman of virtue?”
“That is true.”
“And being such a woman, she would disdain to enter into any relation other than marriage?”
“That is also true.”
“I ask these questions,” said Dom Arcibal, “merely as a prelude to the main inquiry, which is this: would you abandon your priesthood to marry her?”
Stephen uttered a weak and desolate “No.”
The Benedictine inveigler of souls placed his finger on the secret flaw in Stephen’s character. “What we are dealing with here, Monsignor, is the case of the half offender who carefully selects a sin that can never materialize. A would-be Lucifer who dares not take the consequences of open revolt against either the earthly or the Heavenly Father. Can you deny the pitiful mechanics of this plot against yourself?”
“I have no wish to deny anything,” said Stephen abjectly. “Only tell me what I must do to salvage my priesthood.”
Dom Arcibal’s voice returned to its normal register of kindliness. “First of all, Monsignor, you must stop pillaging pear trees. Give over contending with God. You are no match for Him, anyway. I suggest also that you revise your idea of the priesthood as a courtly tournament—half joust, half miracle play—in which you have cast yourself as a knight at arms, alone and palely loitering. Perhaps the Church needs cavalier priests. Well, let others tread that stage. A man carrying your impost of conscience would be split wide open by such a role.”
Reassuring warmth rayed from the monk’s bulky person. “There is much love in your heart, my son. God wants all of it, else He would not so relentlessly pursue His fleeing servant. … We will discuss these matters frequently and at length in the days ahead. I suggest, for the present, that you make the Stations of the Cross daily while you are with us here. Meditate particularly upon the seventh station, Christ’s second fall. Let it be a symbol of the special temptation that may crush a man midway in this mortal life.”
“I shall do so, Father.” Humbled by the new understanding that Dom Arcibal had given him, Stephen slipped to his knees beside the Benedictine’s chair. “I should like very much at this time to make a general confession covering my entire life.”
Silently Dom Arcibal drew a purple stole from his pocket. By the act of placing it around his neck he was transformed; the human counselor became the divinely commissioned looser of sins. Clinician and seismologist vanished. A priest took their place.
“I shall be glad to hear your confession, my son.”
Kneeling on the stone floor, Stephen Fermoyle endeavored to fulfill the conditions required of anyone, layman or priest, who hopes to receive the sacrament of penance. He confessed his sins fully, neither mitigating nor extenuating them; he made a firm resolution nevermore to offend God, and he accepted the penance his confessor laid upon him.
At the end, Dom Arcibal lifted his right hand to exercise the priestly power of absolution. “Cleanse your heart now in the springs of pure contrition.” His “Ego te absolvo” blended with Stephen’s “O my God, I am most heartily sorry for having offended Thee.” Together their voices rose in affirmation of the boundless love that taketh away the sins of the world.
DAY BY DAY, Stephen entered more deeply into the life of the monastery.
There were no drones in this monastic hive; each member of the community, whether a full-habited monk, a lay brother, or a postulant, had his assigned task. Some toiled in the gardens and vineyards stretching far out onto the Campagna; others tended goats and made an excellent cheese from their milk. The repair and upkeep of the old monastery required the constant attention of masons and carpenters. There were stablemen, kitchen helpers, cooks, launderers, and wielders of mop and broom. And finally there was the scientific work of the laboratory, where, under Dom Arcibal’s direction, a group of monks kept the seismograph adjusted and watched its needle scrawl a tremulous record of upheavals and displacements in all parts of the earth’s crust.
The entire life of the monastery pivoted on St. Benedict’s Rule—a remarkable document written fourteen hundred years ago, and still a model of wisdom and reasonableness in directing man’s attention to his eternal destiny. The rule barred extraordinary asceticism; St. Benedict— and Dom Arcibal after him—held surprisingly moderate views on fasting, mortification, and prayer. Although the use of flesh meat was forbidden, two meals a day were permitted. Idle chatter was discouraged, but conversation on profitable subjects might be pursued. Public prayers were brief; there was no limit, however, to the length of one’s private devotions. Studying the rule, Stephen found it to be singularly perceptive in gauging the capabilities and limitations of human nature. Benedict had shrewdly appraised the distance that a well-disposed soul could travel in its day-to-day progress toward God.
The chief spiritual activity of the Benedictines was the recitation of the Divine Office or Opus Dei—“to which,” as St. Benedict urged, “nothing is to be preferred.” Seven times daily—at Matins, Prime, Terce, Nones, Sext, Vespers, and Compline—the entire congregation gathered in the choir to chant the canonical hours. As a retreatant Stephen was permitted to be present, but could take no part in these exercises. Longing to lift his voice in the noble strophes of psalms and antiphon, he stood humbly mute while others praised the Creator’s name and works. After the first pangs of rejection had passed, he learned to console himself with Paul’s counsel to the Corinthians: “Sing with the spirit … sing also with the understanding.”
As a retreatant (and, therefore, a guest), Stephen might have claimed exemption from physical labor. On Dom Arcibal’s advice, however, he entered into the work of the community by helping in the kitchen for two hours before each meal. If vegetables were to be peeled, bread pans greased, or a fire built in the baking oven, Stephen performed these menial duties under the preoccupied eye of Brother Alphonsus—who turned out to be the short-jerkined, not-quite-bright oaf that Stephen had nicknamed “Fairhands” on the day of his arrival.
Brother Alphonsus was kitchen boy, dishwasher, and, by his own election, slavey-general to the monastery at large. A clumsier piece of clay had never whirled off the potter’s wheel. At stumbling, falling, bumping into chairs and tables, Brother Alphonsus was a virtuoso. As he staggered across the kitchen with an armful of hot loaves or a pile of plates, his lack of co-ordination seemed pitiful. Halfway across the floor it became ludicrous. When he finally reached his goal with the bread still in his arms, Stephen knew that by some miracle the God of falling sparrows had marked Fairhands for special protection.
Brother Alphonsus displayed an inexhaustible cheerfulness at whatever work he was doing. After the day’s cookery was over he would wash and iron the linen for the entire monastery—with great inner serenity and much exterior banging. As a lay brother he made no aspirations to the priesthood; while other members of the community chanted, performed devotional Offices, or helped Dom Arcibal with his seismographic work, Fairhands was content to remain in the kitchen. Although he could read well enough, he found no satisfaction in books. Evidently he feared that too much learning would make him vain.
It soon became clear to Stephen that every act of Fairhands’ life was a devotional exercise—offered privately when others were present, openly when he was alone. Coming into the kitchen one morning, Stephen found him prostrate before the stove. At the risk of prying, Stephen asked, “What are you doing on the floor?”
Fairhands got up sheepishly. “I am not able to offer great things to God,” he said, “so I make what offerings I can. While waiting for my little pancake to cook, I sometimes prostrate myself in adoration of Him who gives me the grace to make it—as well as the flour to make it with.”
Stephen had known dedicated souls—his sister Ellen and Ned Halley among them—but he had never seen, or even heard of, a humility equal to that of Brother Alphonsus.
One day as Stephen helped Fairhands dice the onions and potatoes for the soup that was the main meal of the day, he thought he heard the lay brother call him by name. “What did you say?” asked Stephen above the clatter of knives. Fairhands shook his head: “Nothing.” A minute later Stephen again heard his name. “Whom are you talking to?” he demanded. Brother Alphonsus continued to hack away at great risk to his thick fingers, and said:
“I am merely asking God to accept my work as an act of love. …”
“Fine. But how did my name get into it?”
“I was begging Him to protect your fingers.”
“My fingers? What about your own?”
Fairhands began whacking at another onion. “If God wills that I cut myself, I shall accept it as a mark of His favor. But since I have placed the whole matter in His hands, it is not likely that any accident will befall.”
Since I have placed the whole matter in His hands …
All Dom Arcibal’s wisdom, all Stephen’s meditations on humility, all the devotions of the Opus Dei, were summed up in the crystal simplicity of Fairhands’ faith. Instead of trying to outrival the earthly father or dazzle the Heavenly One, you merely surrendered yourself, trustingly, completely, to His will. Whatever happened thereafter was a mark of special favor. …
As simple as that. And as difficult. …
STEPHEN stayed a month at the monastery. In prayer and contemplation the hours wheeled past, each a reminder of God’s timeless plan. When the month ended, Stephen’s problems were by no means settled, yet he had become aware, temporarily at least, of his true position as a finite and very humble segment on the compass of infinity.
He returned to Rome on October 29 to find the city ominously quiet under the hand of Mussolini. II Duce had marched on Rome at last, not with flashing banners but in a sleeping car. The dictator who was to lead the Italian people through an era of seeming triumph, and fearful degradation, had descended on the Eternal City while its citizens were all asleep.